Instead of a Grenade Launcher
by writingtitan
Summary: She blamed it all on Stockholm's Syndrome, but tonight, she could have meant the other word.  Collaboration fic with thisisforyou. Rated M for violence and language.
1. Hogtie

**AN:/** This is a collaboration fic, with fellow author thisisforyou. It contains an OC that I used in Cure but this story has no link to that one.

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><p>Marvin was currently walking down the street, donning a pink flowery sundress and an over-sized straw weaved hat. The current contract was…well he didn't really know. He'd phased out when Victoria was code named 'bunny' and Ivan become all googly eyed. He wouldn't say he was disappointed when he found out that Victoria had been saved when he had left her after she was shot; it was more that he was annoyed that Ivan saved her as they been all over each other ever since. The new Sarah girl was grating on his nerves. He thought she was fine at first but then Frank wouldn't let him probe her for Government materials. She said he was a pervert. He said he was being thorough. She slapped him. He hit her with a pillow.<p>

Marvin had gotten trouble for that, which is why now he was the one walking in the dress, as the bait, as opposed to Frank's girlfriend. He was quite disappointed as he was sure he had told Frank that Sarah was wearing the dress next time.

"Oooh pancakes"

He averted his attention walking into the pancake house in the middle of the shop. He stood in line glancing up at the menu board with pretty pictures of all the illustrious pastries. He smirked quickly grabbing a two for one voucher from the woman in front of him's purse; laughing gleefully until he got a paper cut. He frowned. This didn't prove that Sarah was right; people still got shot more.

Sarah and Frank were so rude! He thought as he awaited his order of double chocolate chip, with banana's and maple syrup. This was the best assignment ever! Oh wait, crap, the actual assignment. He shrugged still waiting for his order. He should actually try and remember what the assignment was before he acted. He thought back to last night.

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><p>He had looked at the ceiling in horror. He had been peacefully sleeping, until he heard the strangest of sounds from Ivan's room. Never had he thought that Ivan would sleep with a woman while on a mission. He had been wrong. Ivan did have a sex drive! Then, he heard more disgusting sounds. His only comfort was taken in hoping the moans and cries would die down soon, and that maybe he could convince Victoria what he heard in the morning as juicy gossip.<p>

Only, things got increasingly loud. Then the woman began to scream Ivan's name. Marvin shivered in horror. Things only got worse when he realized he recognized the voice.

His fears were confirmed when he heard Ivan cry out the name of his partner with his moans.

Marvin had the worst team-mates. There he was, trying to sleep and they were doing it right next door! In an inn with paper thin walls! He was going to kill Ivan and shame Victoria. He didn't care what they did together; he just didn't want to hear it ever. Never, ever again.

As the night fell back into quiet, Marvin believed the nightmare was over. He slowly drifted back to sleep, despite the emotional scarring he had just experienced. Then, the shower next door turned on.

He heard a giggle, then a groan.

Inconsiderate assholes.

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><p>So with that and the alleged sexual assault on Sarah, Marvin had been forced to be the jail bait in this mission. Sarah had questioned how Marvin was meant to attract the attention as he was hardly an object of lust, but Victoria simply stated to the poor dear, was that they were trying to attract the attention of a infamous criminal profiler and Marvin's normal image screamed 'evaluate my brain'. And with that, Victoria pushed him out the door; "elegantly" he thought bitterly. Not that she would ever push, more like nudge, politely maneuver, maybe physically direct towards. She had then slammed the door – not slammed per say, shut with force, no no no, closed gently with a splash of finesse. 'I'm defending her now, oh god', he thought shaking his head. 'Perhaps' she's chipped me?' He shook his head mournfully. 'Last time I give her the honor of feeding me!'<p>

Ah, that's right the criminal profiler. Some hostage gig to get her to profile some guy they're meant to 'retire'. Pssh. What a nancy way of saying 'shooting the fuckers head off'. He sat at his table, staring out the shop window as the broad passed. She did a double take and then decided to subtly enter the pancake house. He rolled his eyes consuming a mouthful.

"Any good?"

She inquired politely. She was an attractive woman, with a nice smile. Straight teeth, he thought. She had an average height and wore bright neon green glasses that clashed horribly with her black suit. Marvin groaned whacking his palm repeatedly against his hand. Fashion? He wanted that fucking chip out. She sat down quickly after that. He didn't get it; for all she knew he could have been just another lune, but she seemed to sense his criminal aura. He smirked. He had a killer sense. After a few minutes he thought of a subtle way of leading her out before shrugging slamming down his fork, standing quickly and grabbing her. He wrapped his arms around her front dragging her out. She of course fought, people of course screamed. It was a big tantrum of human emotions, and he couldn't care less. Just jammed her into the van and drove off. Ivan would complain that he wasn't being subtle; screw subtle, he did get the job done.

The journey, unfortunately did require an over night expedition. Marvin of course, use to sleeping naked, didn't even consider changing his routine when female company was present. So asleep nude in the front seat, the brunette broad bound in the back, he didn't expect much trouble. Well that is until he smelt the smoke. He woke fogged, looking to his left he saw out his car window a rising billow of smoke. He soon realized that the broad had set his clothes on fire and escaped. He probably shouldn't of left the knife in the back but he couldn't be bothered moving it. He shrugged exiting the van to go find her in the forest. It didn't take long. The chick didn't know the meaning of silent escape. She seemed startled and surprised to see him there bare, and wrinkly.

"I didn't think you'd pursue naked, or barring that it'd take a whil- did you seriously hunt me naked?"

She shuddered, looking down when she looked up his muscles were coiled as if he were about to spring. She held up her hands in protest.

"No, no Ill go with you. I don't need THAT stain forever on me, thank you".

–

So their mini journey came to a close as they arrived at a cabin in a location that cannot be revealed. He had immediately tied her to a chair, as she glanced around at the five pairs and curious eyes.

"Look-" She started before Marvin cut her off.

"No matter what you say, I will not have sex with you."

"Ego blowing but no. That's not what I was going to say"

She rolled her eyes, twisting her wrists to test her constraints.

"You've had sex?"

Sarah seemed genuinely shocked, as she spoke, blushing at the slight insult, though Marvin considered her question seriously before responding.

"Yeah, I think, I'm not sure. I was checking her for chips and then well-"

Sarah looked startled again this time standing in her shock.

"Wait, you've had sex with a woman? I thought you were gay."

Frank patted her arm reassuringly.

"He's lying. He is gay. When Victoria and Ivan were on the rocks after the whole shooting incident, Marvin was very 'supportive' towards Ivan during that time"

Marvin rolled his eyes, crossing his arms.

"I commiserated with him because women are insane."

Sarah, mimicked his actions with a rueful sigh.

"You're black"

Marvin looked at her as if she'd grown a third horn.

"...Case. Point."

Frank interceded between the two.

"Marvin, just his morning didn't you complain about women being – and I quote - insane and impossible?"

Marvin pointed at their captive, then gestured to his borrowed clothing.

"She set my clothes on fire. I'm sorry, were their more appropriate words?"

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><p>More fire ensued that night though this time it was not the fault of Antonia's, who was still tied to the chair. They five of them were coughing and scrambling about as they made their way to the exit. Marvin turned back, but not before Frank seized his arm, trying to tug him forward. Disentangling from his grip he motioned to their captive, Antonia.<p>

"I'm getting the pig"

Frank nodded and exited. Kicking the chair over, the wood broke and Marvin picked her up bridal style before exiting the house.

"You saved me?" She said with a small tear in her eyes and frog in her throat. Sarah smiled approaching them, with Marvin retreating as that usually meant trouble.

"I didn't mean to make her cry. Girls leak from time to time"

Sarah shook her head, as Frank called her over.

There were many theories of how the fire started that night. Marvin swore Antonia did and that her being bound was just a convenient excuse, but it was later proven that Ivan and Victoria had forgotten to tend to it, as they got..._distracted._

They decided to camp out, around the cabin as it made a pretty nice camp fire now that Frank & Ivan had contained it to a more condensed area. They took shifts watching the captive though Antonia insisted sleeping near Marvin as he'd been the only one that even thought of saving her. She glanced around, though, a small smile on her lips, at the dynamics of this quirky group. If she had some paper right now, she thought, there would be some _serious _analysis.

"There's a word for what you feel toward us," Sarah said during the beginning of her watch.

"Stockholm's Syndrome?"

She replied tiredly.

"No, the other one. Love."

For once, she had to agree with Marvin; the bitch was crazy.

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><p>AN: Part two coming soon!


	2. Foryou didn't tell me a chapter name

**A/N: It's me here! That's right, **_**thisisforyou**_**! Or more commonly known among lesser mortals who dislike fanfiction (I know, **_**lesser**_** is an understatement) as Antonia. I'm allowed to write in first person because I am the first person. If you get my meaning.**

**First of all: I have no idea where **_**writingtitan **_**intended to go with this, and I don't really care. That's the point of this little colab. It could go anywhere, and the not knowing makes it fun. One thing, though: there will be a CIA HQ break-in. Because Karl Urban (AN/WT: Ew) is too sexy not to rattle a few desks with. **

**Second of all: I apologise wholeheartedly for the lack of consideration shown by **_**writingtitan **_**for the little thing we like to call grammar. **(AN/WT:** Bite me) I've tried coaching her, (**(AN/WT:** 'coaching'? you call the physical and psychological abuse coaching? You're going to be the worst soccer mom) but she's impossible. Like a bloody two-year old. Honestly.**

**Oh, and third of all: neither I nor **_**writingtitan**_** owns RED, Con Air, the Gretchen Lowell series or any other works of fiction mentioned in this work of fanfiction. We just have a habit of pretending that I do, because I was there. It's much more fun that way.**

**Ok? Good. Right. On to the story.**

**-for you!**

So that was really exciting. Perhaps not the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me, but definitely up-there. I'd been calmly walking down the street when I'd seen a man in a dress. Which in itself would have made my day. But I, being my usual bashful self, went to have a chat with him and next thing I knew I was under said man-in-a-dress' arm being carried back the way I had come, shoved in a truck and driven away.

And driven away. Seriously, the drive had taken _hours_. He didn't tie me up or anything, which was nice of him, but he didn't talk to me either and it got seriously boring in there. And the van smelt like a combination of gunpowder, old blood and unwashed male. Typical getaway vehicle.

Eventually we'd stopped and I thought we'd actually _gotten _somewhere, but next thing I knew I'd been tied up and the guy had taken off the dress – no, like _taken it off completely_, he wasn't wearing anything underneath and it wasn't something you could miss – and before I could even cry 'rape' he'd sat back in the driver's seat and fallen asleep. Naked.

Which was all fantastic because there was a knife next to me on the seat, in plain sight, so I cut through the scarves he'd tied me up with, set the dress on fire and scampered out the back door. I mean, all very interesting and everything, but enough is enough. And I don't sleep in vans and I was bored.

I became less bored when he jumped out of the van clad only in his wrinkles and followed me. A few _more_ senseless hours of driving later and I was tied to a chair in a log cabin, so deep into the middle of nowhere there was no signal on my BlackBerry. The still-naked man, I found out, was called Marvin and was in fact not crazy but a slightly eccentric genius. Well, I'm not sure I'll be believing that one. In the cabin was also someone apparently high-up in the Russian embassy, his girlfriend (from the look of her hands I wouldn't want to be in a room with her and an AK-47) and another couple, some sort of bald CIA retiree and a girl who looked like she was having the time of her life.

All fine and dandy until the middle of the night. See, it's very difficult to fall asleep when you're tied to a chair so hard and straight-backed it could have come from the STASI HQ. So even though the old couple had made sure everyone else in their little commune was asleep before they started cuddling they didn't even glance at me. I could see that the fire was getting too high but they weren't looking, and I _knew_ they'd blame me if the cabin burnt down after the escapade with the dress but I didn't want to interrupt them. People get embarrassed when they realise someone was (I couldn't help it, I assure you) watching them copulate. I know, go figure.

Marvin pulled me out of the fire. For a moment there I thought they'd all forgotten about me. But I _wasn't _crying. You know how smoke gets in your eyes and it _really _stings? Yeah. That was it. Period. But when we settled down to sleep – well, some of us, others of us were still tied up – I had to admit I felt a little less hostility towards these people. But Sarah took that one a tad too far.

_Love. _

She was crazy. They were _all _plainly insane and though my fingers itched to set up some kind of profile, the link was obvious. They were all retirees.

I've seen a lot of shit in my time (I won't even get into the story where I was shot by a criminal mastermind in an airplane. That cut me pretty deep, even _after _they removed the bullets from my chest. It was more the fact that he shot me _with my own gun _than anything else, and the stupid thing was I almost trusted him for a ridiculous second there. But I said I wouldn't get into it. I'm sure I wrote the story down when I was in brutally-enforced bedrest) and as such I can fully understand that that kind of stuff can really mess you up. But really. From the way the others all react to Marvin he's been like this all his life. Must be hell to put up with in public.

_Love_.

Sometimes you just feel a connection with people, y'know? You don't have to know them forever to realise that you belong with them and you never want to leave, and that, sure, maybe the only word you _can_ use to describe such a situation is love.

This wasn't one of those times. Sarah hadn't been with the others that long, I could tell – her and the bald one were still in the honeymoon phase of their relationship – and had obviously never served with the CIA, but god-dammit, she was as crazy as the others. I could see she fit right in. Love? Yeah, sure, Spunky.

But I digress. What I should have been worrying about as Sarah turned away from me on guard duty was not how well I fit into their group but how I would get away from them. I didn't know why they'd kidnapped me, but they were so crazy it could easily be as simple as Marvin had liked the look of me. I didn't know why they were on the run from the law – they quite clearly were – but I'd report them to someone when I got back. Maybe. Maybe they were just a little bit too cute to put in prison or whatever other penalty was facing them.

But that aside, I had to get back. I don't mean to sound arrogant, although I usually do anyway, but the unit I'd been temporarily assigned to back in Nevada needed me somewhat badly. Honestly, you should have seen the state of the investigation before I turned up. They still thought they were chasing a man in an RV somewhere in the middle of the desert when it was quite clearly some sort of organisation. We'd checked for drug use but none of the victims had a history. Anyway, there had been a victim a week since I'd turned up and I really had to stay with the unit and make progress.

But this time there was no knife handy or dress to burn, so I had to stay put and try various methods of sailing away to sleep. I was so desperate I even tried counting sheep, even though I found out when I was five that one didn't work. Apparently when you're tied up and freezing your butt off outside, even the previously fail-safe method of imagining yourself tight in someone's muscular arms, to put it in a nutshell, failed.

So it was in an entirely unrested and somewhat grumpy state that the band of retirees woke to find me. And they knew about it. I thought breakfast was the least they could give me, but apparently I was asking for the world. I didn't get any yesterday, either, you'll remember. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, you know.

They eventually handed me something that was almost, but not quite, toast. Oh, fantastic. Sadly I was so hungry that it actually was. Then I glared at the bald one – Frank – for a while. He seemed to be the leader.

"So did you kidnap me for a reason or can I go now?" I asked petulantly. "And I mean a good reason, one that a normal person would accept. Not that, you know, my glasses don't match my suit." I glanced down at myself, at the black jacket-and-skirt combo I'd had to don for the resource-application meeting I was now two days late for. "There is a reason for that, in case that was it." I usually wear colour. But in the circumstances I hadn't packed a pair of contact lenses. I didn't think they'd make _me_ do any of the greasing since I was technically only 'on loan' from the DEA. Long story.

"You're making a profile for the Desert Road killings," Frank replied calmly, sitting me up against the scorched cabin wall and crouching in front of me. "What do you think the guy's like?"

I rolled my eyes. "It's not a 'guy', it's an organisation," I told him. "There are clear signs. The ritualism, the shape of the bullet-holes. They were done by professionals and dressed to look like serial killings. It's some sort of group or gang or something."

Frank nodded slowly. He craned his head to look at Victoria, the blonde with the gun-worn hands. She shrugged. I was suddenly struck by the feeling that things were about to get interesting, like they hadn't been in years, not since the Beauty Killer fan club in Portland. He turned back to me.

"It's the CIA."

I blinked. "Excuse me?" He couldn't mean the murders. We checked them, none of them had any – I stopped running the thoughts through my mind and direct-looped them out my mouth instead. "We checked all the victims, none of them had any links to the CIA or the FBI or any other of that series of acronyms."

"It was a black-op," Frank replied calmly. He had a nice voice, actually. I notice voices, and this one was very nice; soft and quiet and comforting. Marvin's was a sort of reedy drawl, Ivan's a distinct Russian rumble, Victoria's prim and refined. Sarah's was annoying. "They were contractors. People went to a lot of trouble to make sure they couldn't be traced back to the CIA."

All right. Okay. I'd heard of government corruption and stuff, there was this case a few months back where some big arms dealer started ordering murders through the CIA and the Vice President was involved somehow and it all became rather messy. But come on. If all other excuses fell through – which, unfortunately, after a moment's scrutiny, they did – the CIA wouldn't try anything this close on the heels of that incident. It had been hell to clean up, apparently. "Why should I believe you? Were you guys involved in it or something?"

Another glance around from Frank to Victoria to Ivan to Marvin. Sarah got left out, but I knew what it meant.

It meant, oh shit, they were.


End file.
